Found Emails? Clinton Aide Didn’t Delete Old Messages

The longtime Hillary Clinton aide at the center of a renewed FBI email investigation testified under oath four months ago she never deleted old emails, while promising in 2013 not to take sensitive files when she left the State Department.

FBI Director James Comey notified Congress on Friday, less than two weeks before the election, that the emails had led agents to re-examine whether classified information was mishandled. That had been the focus of the bureau’s earlier criminal inquiry into the former secretary of state’s use of a private email server, which Comey said in July didn’t warrant charges.

The newly discovered emails were on a device seized during a sexting investigation of disgraced former New York congressman, Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Huma Abedin, one of Clinton’s closest aides.

Abedin’s testimony in a recent civil lawsuit about State Department records may help explain why agents found emails that Comey said “appear to be pertinent” and would be reviewed “to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”

For more on Clinton’s emails, watch:

Abedin told lawyers in June in a deposition that, like millions of internet users who don’t manage their inboxes, she simply never deleted old emails, either at work with Clinton or at home with Weiner.

“I didn’t have a practice of managing my mailbox other than leaving what was in there sitting in there,” Abedin said. “I didn’t go into my emails and delete State.gov emails. They just lived on my computer. That was my practice for all my email accounts. I didn’t have a particular form of organizing them. I had a few folders, but they were not deleted. They all stayed in whatever device I was using at the time or whatever desktop I was on at the time.”

Abedin, vice chairwoman of Clinton’s presidential campaign, and Weiner separated this year after Weiner was caught in 2011, 2013 and again this year sending numerous woman sexually explicit text messages and photographs of himself undressed. Federal authorities in New York and North Carolina are investigating online communications between Weiner and a 15-year-old girl.

Abedin’s testimony in the civil suit was complicated by a routine State Department document she signed under penalty of perjury in February 2013. She promised she would “turn over all classified or administratively controlled documents and materials” before she left her government job, and promised that she was not retaining copies, “including any diaries, memorandums of conversation or other documents of a personal nature.” The document required her to give back all “unclassified documents and papers relating to the official business of the government acquired by me while in the employ of the department.”

Comey’s announcement Friday—just months after deciding that anyone’s use of Clinton’s private email server didn’t rise to criminal charges for mishandling or removal of classified information—upended the presidential campaigns in their final stretch before the Nov. 8 voter.

Clinton urged the FBI to “explain this issue in question, whatever it is, without any delay.” Even within the Justice Department, officials advised Comey not to make the announcement.

Upon learning of Comey’s plans to send the letter to Congress, Justice Department officials told FBI officials that was not a good idea and cautioned against it, according to a government official familiar with the discussions. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss the private conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official said the Justice Department had warned the FBI that the letter was inconsistent with department policy intended to avoid the appearance of prosecutorial influence in elections.

The position is laid out in a 2012 memo from then-Deputy Attorney General James Cole. It said prosecutors may never select the timing of criminal charges or investigative actions in a way that can be seen as affecting an election or giving a benefit or disadvantage to a candidate.

The memo says that although the department has a strong interest in prosecuting election-related crimes, such as those involving campaign finance and patronage, employees must remain committed to fairness and political neutrality. “Simply put, politics must play no role in the decisions of federal investigators or prosecutors regarding any investigations or criminal charges,” the memo states.

Comey told FBI employees later Friday he wanted to avoid creating “a misleading impression,” but believed he was obligated.

“We don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed.” Comey wrote in a letter to staff. “I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.”

Former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner is embroiled in yet another scandal over sexually-explicit tweets he sent to an unnamed woman while his wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, was traveling with the Democratic presidential candidate.

The story has already provided plenty of fodder for tabloid newspapers and websites. But is it really relevant to the campaign, or is it just appealing to prurient interests in an attempt to drive online traffic?

The New York Post was the first to report the latest allegations, in a story that ran on Sunday. It quoted from months worth of tweets Weiner sent to “a 40-something divorcee” that were filled with sexual innuendo and photos of himself in his underwear, including one taken with his young son lying on the bed next to him.

Weiner has been a favorite of the tabloids ever since he was forced to resign from Congress in 2011, after sending a sexually-explicit photo to a woman on Twitter. Two years later, he ran for mayor of New York, and was again forced to quit his campaign, after reports that he had been sending naked photos and sexually-suggestive messages to other women.

At the time, Abedin stood by her husband, but on Monday she said they were separating. Abedin has been a close Clinton aide for two decades. She worked as Clinton’s personal assistant during a run for president in 2008 and then as chief-of-staff while she was Secretary of State, and Clinton has said Abedin is like a second daughter.

Donald Trump tried to argue that Weiner’s sexting might be a potential threat to national security, since he might have overheard classified information from his wife that could be passed on to his sexting partners. But this seems like a stretch at best.

Some argue that reporting on Abedin’s marital troubles is justified because a number of media outlets recently reported on a past domestic-violence charge against Breitbart News head Steve Bannon, who is now a top advisor to the Trump campaign, and therefore Clinton and her staff are fair game.

The problem for Clinton team – after Democrats repeatedly pointed to Bannon personal past, going to be hard to argue Weiner is off limits

Others have tried to make the case that if Abedin is struggling with her husband’s infidelity, then it might make the Clinton campaign less effective. But that seems like more of an effort to justify being interested in a lurid sexting case than it does an actual political argument.

Unfortunately for anyone who wants to try and keep lurid or sensationalistic topics out of the campaign, however, Donald Trump has already done more than enough to lower that bar himself, without any help from Anthony Weiner or Hillary Clinton.

A federal judge has set a deadline for the State Department to review nearly 15,000 of Hillary Clinton’s emails as secretary of state, saying it should do so by Sept. 22, in a new development that could bring crucial implications for the presidential election.

The order, coming Monday from Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court, means that the 14,900 emails could potentially be released as early as mid-October, just weeks before Nov. 8, noted The Wall Street Journal.

The latest batch of emails was correspondence that Clinton did not volunteer to turn over to the department last year, according to The New York Times. The FBI reportedly uncovered the emails after scouring Clinton’s private server and officials’ computer archives, then turning them in to the State Department late last month.

After determining which emails contain sensitive government information, the State Department will have to set a timetable for its release.

Judge Boasberg ordered the September deadline the same day conservative watchdog organization Judicial Watch also released hundreds of emails of longtime Clinton advisor Huma Abedin, saying that she “provided influential Clinton Foundation donors special, expedited access to the secretary of state.”

Huma Abedin, a political aide to Hillary Clinton, at rally for Clinton on June 3, 2016 in Culver City, California. (Photo by Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

“In more than a dozen email exchanges, Abedin provided expedited, direct access to Clinton for donors who had contributed from $25,000 to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation,” Judicial Watch said in a statement.

Another email exchange suggests the crown prince of Bahrain “was forced to go through the Clinton Foundation for an appointment” with then-Secretary Clinton, the group continued.

Also on Monday, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump made calls for “a special prosecutor” to step in and investigate Clinton, accusing the FBI and Department of Justice of bias in its probe of the former secretary of state.

“The amounts involved, the favors done, and the significant numbers of times it was done, require an expedited investigation by a special prosecutor immediately, immediately, immediately,” Trump declared in an address in Akron, Ohio.

“After the FBI and Department of Justice whitewash of the Clinton email crimes, they certainly cannot be trusted to quickly or impartially investigate Hillary Clinton’s new crimes, which happen all the time.”

The FBI announced in July that it would not be indicting Clinton over her use of a personal email server during her term at the State Department, angering many Republicans, not least Trump, who contend that the system is “rigged.”

TIME reported on the issue of independent counsel, noting that an external examiner would only be appointed if the attorney general determines a DOJ investigation “would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances.”

Hillary Clinton’s Closest Aide Just Defended Her Use of a Private E-Mail Server

Longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin said in a legal proceeding that Clinton did not want the private emails that she mixed in with State Department emails on her private computer server to be accessible to “anybody,” according to transcripts released Wednesday.

Abedin’s comments provided new insight into the highly unusual decision by the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate to operate a private email server in her basement to conduct government business when she served as secretary of state.

Abedin also said under oath that she was not aware whether Clinton personally deleted any emails during her tenure as secretary.

Abedin told lawyers for the conservative group Judicial Watch in a deposition that she could not recall whether she or Clinton discussed with any State Department officials Clinton’s use of her server exclusively for government business. Abedin, who was Clinton’s deputy chief of staff at the State Department, now works with Clinton’s presidential campaign and often travels with the candidate. Abedin used an email account on Clinton’s server occasionally for government business, although Abedin also used a government address.

“I assumed it was OK to do,” she testified.

Abedin is one of several former State Department officials who are being deposed by the conservative group in a civil lawsuit over the agency’s failure to turn over files under the Freedom of Information Act. A transcript of the proceeding was released by Judicial Watch on Wednesday.

Judicial Watch lawyers repeatedly pressed Abedin to explain Clinton’s concern expressed to her in a November 2010 message that her emails might become public, but the longtime aide insisted that Clinton’s interest in wanting to keep her personal correspondence from being exposed was similar to any private citizen’s.

“I would imagine anybody who has personal email doesn’t want that personal email to be read by anybody else,” Abedin explained. “I read it the same way as she has written it.”

But Clinton’s private server contained tens of thousands of work-related emails as well as private messages, and her decision to conduct both private and government business on her system meant that she kept control of both types of correspondence, effectively preventing her State Department correspondence from being archived by the agency and made available for public records requests. It was not until late 2014—more than a year after Clinton left office—that the State Department learned that she held all of her email and requested that she turn over all work-related records.

Clinton turned over nearly 33,000 business-related messages while disposing of about the same number of personal messages. But Clinton failed to turn over at least three dozen work-related emails, according to the agency. Among those emails was a November 2010 email exchange with Abedin discussing her concerns about the risk of the “personal being accessible.”

The Clinton campaign Wednesday criticized Judicial Watch for its role in filing several lawsuits against the State Department, among more than 30 filed by conservative legal groups and media outlets, including The Associated Press, to obtain Clinton documents. Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said Judicial Watch’s lawsuits ended up “clogging up the courts at the expense of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars.”

Abedin’s deposition also raised questions about the State Department’s practices responding to government records requests under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Abedin, a senior aide during Clinton’s entire tenure there, testified under oath that she never searched or was asked to search for documents in her State Department or her private Clinton email accounts in response to requests or lawsuits under the open records law.

But a review of all requests to the State Department during that period found several asking specifically for copies of Abedin’s emails on a variety of subjects, including her husband, one-time disgraced Rep. Anthony Weiner.

“Were you ever asked to search your Clinton email.com account during your tenure at the State Department in response to a FOIA request or FOIA litigation?” Cocta asked.

“No, I was not,” Abedin said.

It was not immediately clear how the State Department could have complied with such legal requests for Abedin’s emails without asking Abedin to search her messages. Some federal agencies permit full-time FOIA staffers to search the inboxes of senior government officials, but many agencies expect officials to search their own accounts and no U.S. employee presumably would have had access to Abedin’s personal account on Clinton’s private server. Abedin said she was not aware that anyone else searched her accounts, either.

Hillary Clinton aide appears to have had access to her email account

In the latest batch of released emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private account, it appears that her longtime aide Huma Abedin messaged from the address on at least one occasion, according to the Guardian.

In a message dated November 11, 2o10, Abedin appears to have sent a message to Clinton foreign policy aide Jake Sullivan on behalf of Clinton. “Hey it’s Huma. She can’t talk right now. She will call when she gets in car. What flight u [sic] on? Can u email me on other email?”

So it appears that Huma had access to — and at times was using — Hillary Clinton’s personal email account. pic.twitter.com/5j7RcqDcaG

In another email, things get sticky when current CEO of the New America Foundation emailed Clinton to aide Cheryl Mills discussed that “NO ONE” uses a “State-issued laptop” due to “antiquated” technology.

A.M. Slaughter emails HRC's personal email account to decry how many top State officials use personal email accounts pic.twitter.com/KeHEE0C86E

On a more positive note, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg emailed Mills and Clinton to praise the Secretary of State for being a role model and to invite her to a dinner. Sandberg, a vocal supporter of hers, even made mention of Fortune. In an email dated February 16, 2011, Sandberg mentioned a 2008 story by Fortune’s Pattie Sellers about her Women of Silicon Valley events. You can read the full letter here.

Hillary Clinton used personal funds to pay a State Department staffer to maintain an email server she used for both personal and government matters when she was U.S. secretary of state, The Washington Post said on Saturday, citing a campaign official.

The unidentified official for Clinton’s campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination told the Post that the pay arrangement with Bryan Pagliano ensured taxpayer dollars were not spent on a private server that was also used by Clinton’s family and aides to former President Bill Clinton.

Clinton, a former U.S. senator and first lady, has been criticized for using the unsecured server to conduct government business when she was the top U.S. diplomat from 2009 to 2013 and for how she handled classified information.